The upcoming contender to Transmit is Flow. I’ve seen the videos and it looks impressive. Mostly though, it seems to be just another interface for the same functions Transmit offers.

One small thing that stands out to me from the demos is the copy to URL function. Say you upload a jpg to your images folder. You can then copy the URL from inside the ftp client, and paste it wherever you like. You can even set Flow to auto-copy to your clipboard for you.

The one thing about Flow that gets me though is the icon. Cameron pointed out Sebastian’s own post about how he designed it.

If the Dock was a voliére (a birdhouse, in good English), the Flow icon would be a paradise bird.

I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the icon or not, but reading Sebastian’s post was fascinating to say the least. It’s obvious Sebastian did a great job concepting and developing the icon.

P.S. Anyone know how I can get in on the beta testing for Flow?

Ever since the Pony Express, people have loved special deliveries.

You know what I’m talking about. The brown UPS truck drives down the street and you think to yourself, “Is that the book I ordered off Amazon, the RAM from NewEgg, or the authentic Star Trek Tricorder I won on eBay?” Regardless of what random item is coming today, you’re excited…

Transmit works that same spot in your brain that loves to send and receive. But instead of brown trucks and cardboard boxes with tracking numbers, you’re working with the files and servers and FTP on the internets.

Transmit is the FTP client for Mac users.

And anyone that uses a Mac knows I mean more than, “Transmit is an FTP client for the Mac platform”. Mac users have a high standard for their software. It has to do more than just work; Mac applications have to possess style, class and be enjoyable to use, and work like a charm.

Introduction

To truly appreciate Transmit, it helps to have at least a basic introduction to the dynamic duo that is the Mac software company, Panic, Inc..

Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser co-founded Panic about 11 years ago. Their original essays regarding the launch can be read in full here, with my hand-selected excerpts below:

Steven said:

Another thing that seems to have disappeared is the cool software company. Is there a Beagle Bros. of the 90’s? Most seem really straight-laced and are obsessed with “biz”. There are a few with a sense of humor, of course, but they are seldom seen and often overlooked in favor of the “serious” companies. With the software industry being so huge now, compared to the days of the II+, is it possible for a software company to be as personal as Beagle Bros.? Is it still possible to build a software company that will capture the imagination of the next generation of computer users? I don’t know. But I’d really like to find out.

And Cabel said:

I realize that I have to own and believe in my computer. My computer should give me something to fight for. My computer has to have a culture. […] we’ll always be Macintosh first, and Macintosh at heart. The users are consistently more supportive, intelligent, less likely to use ALL CAPS in beta reports, and excited about products.

The Mac, truly, rules. Any developer that says otherwise has forgotten what it means to love computers.

Panic, Inc. is a trend-setting, software development Dojo. Transmit was the first application I bought and is no less than fantastic.

Transmit Started Sans-M

Cabel and Steven released the first version of Transmit in 1998. It was for OS 9 and was actually called Transit. No “m”.

From the original user’s guide Panic tells us that “Transit was designed from the start to be clean, beautiful, and powerful all at once, just like the MacOS is.”

Later, in version 1.2, Panic added the “m”. (If you read the definitions of transit versus transmit, transit seems to make a bit more sense for an FTP client. I’m guessing they changed the name because they didn’t want their application ending in zit. UPDATE: Scratch the zit theory.)

In 2002, Transmit 2 for OS X came out, and now, over 10 years since its original launch, Transmit is at version 3.6.3. It’s universal binary, Leopard friendly and hailed as the best FTP client for Mac. (“It’s name is not Fetch.”) Among its recognitions Transmit has won an Eddy Award, MacWorld Best of Show, and an Apple Design Award.

Transferring Files

Let’s start at the basics for a second. Such as acronym definition. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Which is basically the way you take files from your computer and put them onto your website, and the other way around. You can put PHP, HTML, MP3, MOV and more. Anything you want, anywhere you want.

For the light-weight users Transmit is a great pick because of its reliability, quick transfers and its dashboard widget. I know many people who use free FTP clients, such as CyberDuck, and have had their fair share of headaches. Like poor Cameron, I too used CyberDuck for a while, but it crashed on a semi-regular basis, and just felt buggy and unreliable.

There is always a free “works just like the for-pay version” of virtually every application out there. But there is a reason the for-pay apps are for-pay. Transmit cost thirty bones. You just install it and go. Making peace of mind and reliability worth their weight in gold.

For the power user, Transmit has all the features you could ever use, making it like the huge dude in the gym that makes everyone else look like 7th graders.

What sets Transmit apart, is that it works great for everyone: the single-blog publisher, to the large-scale website developer. Transmit’s interface and usability is clean, easy to understand and works without fail, time after time. And that’s just the beginning. Transmit is packed to the brim with features you never knew you needed.

Like Panic.com says, “If you manage a web site, need to send a file to a friend running an FTP server, need to post eBay images to a image host, or download a lot of software updates, then Transmit is the perfect program for you: it makes FTP easy and fun”

The basic interface of Transmit is perfectly blunt. You’ve got “Your Stuff” on the left and “Their Stuff” on the right.

Your Stuff is what’s on your computer, and Their Stuff is what’s on the server. I like the idea, but I do think it could be named better. Just because a file is on another server doesn’t mean it’s “theirs”. I would prefer to see these named as “Here” and “There”, or “Local” and “Over Yonder”.

A drag and drop from either location, to either location begins the transfer. But you are not restricted to dragging and dropping from within the application. With an open connection, Transmit still acts just like a Finder window. You can take a file on your desktop, drag it and drop it over the “Their Stuff” window to begin an upload and vice-a-versa… It’s file transfering made obvious.

And more than just obvious – Transmit is powerful. It works with practically any server that uses FTP, SFTP, FTP TLS/SSL, WebDAV, or secure WebDAV. And, it works with your iDisk or Amazon S3 file hosting.

Connections

The one thing I surely use the most is Favorites. I have 14 server locations saved. I use about 3 or 4 of them every day, another 3 or 4 every month or so, and the rest on occasion.

(One thing that would make favorites better would be the ability to add notes. For instance, I have a handful of printers’ login information saved but it would be great if I could have a few notes attached to that info that reminded me who to contact after an upload, and other relevant information. I have that info on my computer somewhere else, but it would be nice to have it all in one spot.)

Working in-line with your Favorites is the Drag-n-Droplets the Widget, and (of course) Quicksilver integration.

To create a Droplet, navigate to an ftp destination, then CTRL+CLICK and select “Save Droplet for Folder…”

A dialog box shows up to save the droplet. You can assign the name, save point of the droplet and choose to save the login password as part of the droplet or to prompt for it.

Once you’ve created your new Drag-n-Droplet, just do like you would think: drag and drop a file. Transmit automatically launches, uploads the file, disconnects and quits.

The Widget is the same idea, but on your Dashboard.

And with Quicksilver’s Transmit plugin you’ve got QS integration as well. Simply get the file you want to upload in Quicksilver, tab over, invoke Transmit, then use the arrow keys to choose the Favorite you want to upload to.

From inside Transmit, another great feature is tabbed connections. You can simultaneously upload/download to and from multiple servers and folders. Even cross-transfer files from server to server. This is great for working on other files while a big upload is raging in the background of a different server.

Data Worry-Warts – Worry Not

Ever since its conception, Transmit has been more than just an application for moving files from one place to another. Additionally, it is an invaluable tool for those who use online file storage and syncing.

From the Version 1.0, user’s guide:

If you maintain a web site, prepare a software mirror, or otherwise frequently maintain remote files, you’ve probably need to synchronize — match or mirror remote files to local files on your hard-drive.

But chances are, you either did it painfully by hand, (the “eenie-meenie-minie-moe” system), shouted across the room to co-workers to figure out which files to upload (the “heyPhilwhatsthelatestheaderpic” system), or tried to hand-synchronize files and lost some really important files during the process (we can’t print the name of this one). By using Transit’s built-in synchronization system, you can easily keep remote and local files up-to-date with little effort.

This is great for backing up important data, or syncing entire file folders.

The Little (and not-so-little) Things

• File Editing: Turn to the person sitting next to you, and say “brilliant”.Transmit allows you to edit remote files locally – text files, images, whatever.

  Control+Click on a file and choose what program you want to edit it with. Transmit then downloads the file into a cache and opens it in your chosen application. When you save it, Transmit automatically uploads the saved version.

  Gone are the days of downloading a file, finding it, opening it, editing it, saving it and uploading it… Good luck breaking that old habit.

• Transfer Status Notification: When a file or batch of files are being uploaded or downloaded a little status notifier shows up over the dock icon.A blue up-arrow for uploading, a blue down-arrow for downloading and a green checkmark for completed.

  

  These circle icons also show up in the CMD+TAB application list, and coincide with Growl notification. All of which are extremely helpful for knowing the status of a transfer. I am often uploading large files, and will work on something else while waiting to send an “upload complete” email.

• .Mac Favorites Syncing: Yet one more thing that can stay in sync between your multiple computers. Super helpful for when I’ve added an ftp site onto my PowerBook while at the office then come home and need the same info on my Mac Pro.As an aside: Although it wasn’t a Transmit-only problem, I had some trouble with my favorites once I upgraded to Leopard. I had to fix all the login passwords for my entire Leopard keychain. It fixed 99% of my problems but some favorites I ended up having to delete and re-create.
• Speed: A few file transfers onto my (mt) Media Temple (gs) Grid Server via my home office’s 8MB/sec cable internet averaged 59.6KB/sec.
  • A 745,968 byte file uploaded in 13.5 seconds
  • A 1,826,571 byte file uploaded in 30.2 seconds
  • A 7,087,614 byte file uploaded in 117.5 seconds
  • A 4,791,477 byte folder with 3 files in it uploaded in 79.3 seconds
• Extras: For more Panic culture you’ve got to visit their Extras page.

More Reviews

This is just one of a handful of winded and entertaining software reviews.

Everyone has that moment when the spark of inspiration hits and they decide to publish a website.

Any sort of website. Perhaps an online cat-food shop, a photo journalism e-school, or a weblog about Star Wars Pizza Hut cup-toppers figurine collections. The options are endless, but the motivation is the same: To give something to the world. (Or to make a lot of money.)

And why not share your passions with people from all across the globe? Back before the internet people had to hand-write by candlelight using feathers and ink on parchment paper. And then if they were even fortunate enough to get their book or article printed perhaps local general store might be able to sell a few copies.

But now you can sit in Starbucks with your cappucino and your iPod while hammering away on your laptop. With one tap of the “Publish” button all the world can read your ideas and comment on your cup-topper collection.

At first you start your website for noble purposes. But after a while when you notice a few new people commenting on your posts you start to wonder, “just how many people read this thing anyway?” And that’s when it starts…

Even though you keep reminding yourself that it’s not about the traffic every time you get a boost in visitors, or a post gets extra comments, or someone new subscribes to your feed your heart skips a beat.

On the other hand, there are many perfectly logical reasons for keeping an eye on your website’s traffic and readership. Such as: Discovering the primary search terms that are driving traffic, or seeing who’s referring traffic in your direction, and more…

You can use whatever reasoning you like, but if you have a website you will use some sort of analytics program. So may I suggest you use one that rocks?

Good Taste

I have often wondered why, but there are some people who will order a steak at Denny’s or Village Inn. They want it cooked well-done, (if it comes any other way) and they coat it in A1 Steak-Sauce (to add flavor). But they don’t even bat an eye. To them, a steak is a steak. It’s the name “steak” that tells them they’re living large. And they seem oblivious to the taste of the overcooked, gritty meat.

And then there are people like my good friend Josh from Texas. He will spend an entire day on Saturday preparing meat for a grill-out on Sunday. He tenderizes and marinates the cuts. Then he cooks it all to perfection, and we all savor every bite because it’s goooood.

And Shaun Inman‘s Mint is a website analytics program for those kinds of people: The people who highly appreciate spectacular (and tasty) things.

In a recent Be A Design Cast Interview Shaun Inman gave a brief explanation of how Mint came to be –

What Mint came from is that I had my own personal site and I never found a stats package that fit my needs. They had the rainbow graphs. All this information I didn’t need, and they took a day to render stats. I started playing around with PHP and MySQL, I took all these things that other people were suggesting and created this thing called Mint and wrapped it up in this nice design package. And really the idea was just to have this stats package that was just barebones, no-nonsense, “give me what I want to look at”. The number of hits I’m getting, where they’re coming from, what they’re looking at…

So I built this little application, and I launched it two years ago and it was this cool suprise success.

Version 1

The graphical interface from Mint 1 is very much like the debut of Aqua from OS X 10.0 – in that both were huge breakthroughs in interface design in their respective markets. Both looked completely different and much more appealing than anything else people were using at the time.

I thought it would be fun to reminisce and look at a few screenshots of what Mint Version 1 looked like. So scroll down slowly and enjoy…

And before it was even released the beta testers were singing it’s praises. So while we’re remminiscing, here are some excerpts from a few of the beta testers’ initial reviews.

Rob Weychert, “Mint: A Stats Odyssey” –

I have owned a few web sites in my day, and like anyone who makes their work available to the public, I like to know the whos, how manys, from wheres, and so on, of the people checking out my stuff. Luckily for me and my fellow narcissistic publishers, there are plenty of stats packages out there that can inform us how many hits our sites have gotten, where our visitors are coming from, what browsers they use, and much more. Unluckily, most of those stats packages suffer from shortcomings that undermine their usefulness. Every one I tried either focused on one narrow statistic or presented me with more information than I knew what to do with.

Jason Santa Maria, “Pepper Makes Mint Better” –

…word on the street is Mint even has an Easter Egg. Needless to say, I haven’t touched Refer in all the months of beta testing. Shaun did it, I’m a convert.

Mike Davidson, “Mint: The Flavor of The Month” –

It’s not Urchin, it’s not Analog, and it’s not designed to record every single hit to your website since the beginning of time.

But that is its strength.

Form and Function

The initial structure and feel of Mint hasn’t changed much, but it has certaily been spruced up since 2005. In version one the first thing you noticed was Mint’s clean, beautiful look.

And the same goes with version two, but it’s even better. Have a look-see. (With the Dark Pepper Mint style installed.)

And just for fun, let’s compare the daily hits/visitors pane from Mint with the same pane from Webalizer…

Now onto Function….

Mint lives and breathes within the panes. This is where all the information you want to see about your site can be found. Not only are the panes an intelligent implementation of your data, they are full of fine detail.

Talk about form and function: Mint’s panes are a seamless blend of the two.

Each pane serves up a specific class of data. Such as “Visits”, “Referrers”, “Pages”, “Searches” and more. But within each pane is not just a generic list of numbers. There are several tabs to serve these numbers up in different, useful dishes.

For example, take the Referrers pane. Just mash down on any one of the four tabs to see information about referrers to your site in a different, but still very useful way.

Moreover, an additional bonus to the Newest Unique tab is the RSS feed it offers. Here you can subscribe to the newest unique referrers to your site and track them from the comfort of your favorite reader. This provides a fantastic way to keep tabs on new, incoming links to your site. Which ultimately leads to the Mint High-Five, but I’ll get to that later.

Another helpful pane is “Searches”. Here you can see your most common queries that land people to your site. This is more than just “oh, neat” information. By knowing what people are searching for, you are secretly informed on which Star Wars cup-topper is the most popular. It can be extremely helpful if you want your site to be more relevant and visitor friendly.

For me, the light turned on when I saw that there was one particular search that was dominating for keywords: “iPhone Tips”. Over the past few months that search query has sent ten times more Googlers to my site than any other search, and they all are landing on the same page: my iPhone Tips and Tutorials List.

When I saw that thanks to Google my iPhone tips page was the second most popular landing page on my site I decided to put a little bit (emphasis on little) of effort into warming the page up to newcomers.

All these stats aren’t exclusive to Mint, of course. There are certainly other other analytics programs which inform you of searches and visitors too. But when you’re looking at ugly charts your eyes can get blurred and your brain can turn off and you can easily miss out on important information.

In the end though, it’s always the little things that stand out to me. My favorite graphical element in Mint is the transparent cross-hatches at the top of the screen. They sit just under the navigation bar.

They’re discreet, sly and add the finishing touch to an overall superb design.

Now pause, and think about this: How was Shaun able to get numbers and URLs to look so incredible and feel so noble? Thanks to Mint, even our puny site stats still seem stunning and exciting.

Setting Up Mint

To use Mint you need your own hosted domain and your hosting server needs support for MySQL and PHP to setup the database. This is basically the same thing a good CMS needs, and if you’re paying more than $2 a month for hosting you should be fine. (If you’re looking for a good hoster, Mint and I both recommend (mt).)

Installing Mint is a cinch. You fill in your database info, upload the folder and then follow the instructions. If you’re not too savvy with phpMyAdmin, there is a great step-by-step guide for setting up a database and user on the WordPress Codex site.

If you need some assistance configuring Mint with your CMS here are some helpful threads from the Mint forums:

• Configuring Mint for WordPress
• Configuring Mint for Expression Engine
• Configuring Mint for Movable Type
• Configuring Mint for Textpattern

Pepper

Even if all we got were the basic functions bundled with Mint – or a “Thin Mint” install – it would still be worth the cost. But Shaun has opened the app for 3rd party developers to create additional “plugins” called Pepper – as in Peppermint.

By adding Pepper to your Mint installation you are able to expand its capabilities. And thanks to the many 3rd party developers that have produced some fantastic additions, there is a wide variety of fantastic peppers available to widen the scope of your Mintabilities.

I have a pretty small Pepper lineup on my Mint installation. Other than the bundled “Default” and “Backup/Restore” peppers I only have the “User Agent 007”, “Trends”, “Outbound” and “iPhone” peppers installed.

Here’s what they do:

• The Default Pepper covers the basics. It is responsible for tracking the number of page views and unique visitors, where they are coming from and what they are looking at, as well as which search terms led them to my site. These statistics are displayed within four data-specific panes.Note: It is always a bummer to see the latest 15 referrers to your site as Google Images domains. Ramanan posted a list of all the google images sites to enter in to the Referrers Prefs panell so they don’t show up in your newest unique list. For archive’s sake, I posted the list as a text file, here. Just select all, copy and paste.
  
• Backup/Restore does not record or display any data in Mint. It is simply a utility to backup and restore my Mint database tables. Though I have yet to need it.
• User Agent 007 goes undercover to uncover who’s using which browser on which platform at what resolution and with which plug-ins installed.
• Trends simply tracks trends across a specified period. Such as which permalinks are up or down in page views compared to last weeks.
• The Outbound Pepper tracks clicks to links on external sites.
• The iPhone Pepper enables single-column mode in Mint when browsing from an iPhone—leaving the default multi-column experience for the desktop. Mint on the iPhone is gorgeous.

You can find a list of all the Peppers at at Mint’s Peppermill or at the Peppermint Tea site.

Junior Mint, The Dashboard Widget

When checking your stats is only an F12 (or F4) away, the the Junior Mint Dashboard Widget can get addicting.

If you’re not using Mint version 2, or your not on OS X 10.4+ there is still a solution for you. You can use the Stale Mint widget for Mint 1, a Yahoo Widget, or a Windows Vista sidebar gadget.

The dashboard widget combined with your Newest Unique Referrers Feed make a great pair. Going hand in hand for discovering and then determining the source of a new traffic spike. When you notice on your Widget that more visitors are coming in than normal you can open your feed reader and check the Referrers List to see who’s sending the traffic.

The Com-mint-ity

More than the design and the functionality of Mint, there is also a community of users. Rob Goodlatte nails it saying,

It’s one thing to have a lot of customers, but it’s an amazing accomplishment to have so many customers who are rabid fans of the product — like everyone I know who uses Mint.

Mint is being worked on, developed and used by people just like you and me. It truly is what Shaun wanted it to be: A simple, fantastic, beautiful, “show me what I want to see” application. It is fun to use, it’s constantly updated, and there is a community of happy Mint users.

Which brings us to the high-five…

One way the Mint community connects is through what I like to think of as the Mint Referrer High-Five. There is something about seeing someone-elses-site.com/mint/ in your referrers list that tells you they were intrigued, and wanted to see why your site was showing up in their referrers list. They wanted to know what you were saying and why you were sending them traffic, so they came over to check things out.

Their …/mint/ referral showing up in you referrer’s list is like a high-five from them to you.

As long as were on the topic of community, other Minters include Sean Sperte, Panic Software, John Gruber, Ben Gray, Dave Caolo, Kevin Cornell, Glenn Wolsey, Cameron Hunt, Michael Lopp and of course – Shaun Inman.

More Reviews

This is just one of a handful of winded and entertaining software reviews.